The Death of Wonder

 

I've lost the eyes that made me a child, 
Through which the ordinary once ran wild. 
The world grows old beneath my view; 
Even the miraculous feels déjà-vu.

Sadness clouds my weather-beaten mind, 
And locks me in a cage of yesterday; 
Each new dawn leaves nothing new to find, 
Each open door leads down a well-worn way.

How can I call myself a child of Nature, 
When she rebirths herself every spring, 
While I grow dull with age, a pale caricature, 
Too old to marvel, too tired to sing?

I want everything in order,
Want everything to make sense,
Even if I must pay the price
Of losing innocence.

The trees still tremble at the touch of rain, 
The stars still set the midnight skies alight; 
Yet all their magic falls on me in vain— 
My eyes can see, but wonder has taken flight.

Tomorrow, the Sun will rise again,
The world will turn as it always has;
But will wonder awaken in me,
Or will I watch another surprise pass?

From Zoo to Zoo

Our journey
is from a zoo to a zoo,
and perhaps
the journey itself
is an attempt to be free.

Ignorance and knowledge,
poverty and wealth,
even the five elements
we wander through—
could these, too, be cages
we mistake for places to stay?

We touch the elephant
in the dark:
a rope, a snake,
a wall, a spear, a fan.
Each of us feels
what we can,
yet none sees the whole.
Each believes
they know the goal.

The elephant, though,
stands at ease,
untroubled by our truths,
while we argue
over what it is.

And so we journey
from cage to cage,
searching for freedom,
never quite certain
whether we seek to escape
the zoo we see
or the one
we do not.

Yet, beneath a tree,
sheltered from the heat,
we discover a freedom
we never chose—
and perhaps
never needed to seek.

A Choice

Sounds all around us,
each different in nature.
We're all here,
yet we seldom hear.

In a single moment,
everything can change—
an accident,
a terminal disease,
a pink slip.

Are we here to suffer?

Nothing has changed—
the accident,
the terminal disease,
the pink slip.

Yet perhaps
we are not here to suffer. 

 

The Light That Never Fades

In a darkened room,
you see nothing.
You switch on the light,
and everything comes into view.

Come, let us begin here.

Close your eyes.
You know they are closed.
But who knows?

Is it the mind?

Then turn your gaze
towards the mind itself.
You know when thoughts arise,
when they linger,
when they dissolve.

But what is it
that knows the mind?

Consider the clothes you wear,
the food you eat,
the house you call your own.
You know them all,
yet none of them is you.

Now look within.

You know your body
when it is healthy,
when it aches,
when age inscribes its passage
upon your face.

You know your mind
when it rejoices,
when it grieves,
when it wanders through
the labyrinths of thought.

The body changes.
The mind changes.
You witness their changing.

Then who are you,
if neither tells the whole of you?

You are not merely Supratik,
the name you answer to,
the face the mirror remembers,
the story you tell yourself.

Remember the infant Supratik?
That little body is gone.
The child gave way to the youth,
the youth to the man.

And one day,
this ageing body, too,
will return to the earth.

Names fade.
Forms change.
The chapters close.

But must the knower
of all these changes
change with them?

Now consider the three states
through which you travel.

In waking,
a world unfolds before you.

In dreaming,
another world arises,
only to disappear
when you awaken.

And in deep sleep,
where neither world appears,
you wake to say,
“I slept well,”
or “I knew nothing.”

Pause here.

What can you truly claim
about that silence?
What was absent,
and what, if anything,
remained beyond your knowing?

Do not rush to an answer.
Let the question do its work.

For the Self, as the sages teach,
is not merely the waking person,
the dreamer lost in dreams,
or the sleeper sunk in darkness.

It is not another object
waiting to be discovered,
nor a little person hidden
somewhere inside the body.

It is that by which
every state is known,
while it cannot itself
be reduced to any state.

The mind may seek it
as though it were a distant star.
The intellect may name it,
argue over it,
and build philosophies around it.

But no name can contain it,
no thought can make it an object.

In the stillness of inquiry,
the ancient question returns:

Who am I?

Not the body alone.
Not the restless mind.
Not the passing name
or the life that bears it.

Tat tvam asi—
Thou art That.

The deepest truth of Advaita
is not that Supratik
will live for ever as Supratik,
but that the Self, in its true nature,
was never born
and can never die.

The light does not come and go
with the scenes it illuminates.

And what you seek
beyond the changing world
is not somewhere else.

It is the very truth
by which you know
that you are here.

The One Reality

 

If I could see the same wood
in a table or in a lectern,
why can’t I see in you
the same Brahman I see in me?

Perhaps I’m overwhelmed
by this mind and body.

The One Reality

If I could see the same gold
in a bangle or in a necklace,
what prevents me from seeing
the one reality in all its grace?

Perhaps the mind and body
cannot trace the path through silence.

If I mistook a rope for a snake
but, through knowledge, came to know
that there had never been
a reptile to fear,
what prevents me from seeing
reality as it truly is?

Perhaps the mind and body
have yet to learn to be at ease.

If I could see the same water
in the ocean, in the waves, and
in the clouds,
I could see Brahman in a crowd
and recognise it instantly.

The waves may subside,
the clouds may disperse,
but I remain limitless—
the one, indivisible Self.

Like every other discipline,
this, too, requires practice;
this, too, requires mastery,
this too, needs faith, bravery.

Beyond Division

Divisions of every kind
dissolve into oblivion
with knowledge.

Then there is no fear,
no feat to achieve,
no greed to pursue,
no longing to possess,
no need to want.

And yet, with vim
and vigour
you face life as it is,
and compete
as though you were
that little creature
you had risen above.

The Quiet Art of Being

When I hold your hand, my friend,
I know the days are golden and will never end.
We'll sail through thick and thin;
I draw my strength from somewhere within.
I'm so happy and complete;
It doesn't matter if I lose or win.
I forget to fight; there's no appetite to compete.

But the day you left me, my friend,
I was shattered; I couldn't pretend.
Sadly, the world for me had fallen apart;
The way you hurt me broke my heart.

Days were long, nights lonely;
The bed lay in darkness, weeping and moaning.
My breaths were heavy,
My hands forlorn;
Moments dropped dry as the pool on the lawn.
I was scared to dream
Of a fresh new dawn.

But time has taught me to begin anew,
To see the world in its different hue.
I walk alone, yet feel no void;
I've found the peace I once destroyed.
The silence no longer weighs me down,
Nor does solitude make me frown.
I've learnt that life can still be a winsome whole,
Even when there's none to befriend my soul. 

Born Anew

When I hear these waters
rolling down from somewhere
I imagine it as a hidden place in
a mountain where treasures are stored,
tears of joy roll down my cheeks
For all that I have lost,
 have learned.

When the softest light falls
upon the earth from somewhere
I imagine the sky,
wisdom dawns within me,
teaching me peace.

When darkness falls
and the day disappears
Somewhere I imagine
to be nature’s memory,
wisdom, tolerance, and acceptance
are born anew.

 

The Boat That Stayed

 

With my boat, I am going nowhere.

The sails, the mast, the boom lie still,
though the wind keeps pressing against them.
The rigging and lines have grown weary;
even the keel and rudder seem tired
of carrying me nowhere. Hence tied.

There is an unspeakable sorrow
in knowing that tomorrow,
when another dawn breaks,
I may still be here—
anchored to the same place.

Around me, the waters awaken.
The port stirs to life.
Other boats slip quietly into the morning,
their sails catching the restless wind,
their hulls gliding towards distant horizons.

Every dawn seems to renew them;
every morning gives them another beginning.

But I remain.

I am in a fix—
caught between staying
and setting myself free.

Perhaps I should sell the boat,
let someone else take her out to sea,
let another hand hold the wheel,
another heart trust the wind.

Yet how does one sell a boat
that has carried so much of one's life?

So I sit here,
listening to the water
and watching the others disappear
beyond the harbour mouth,

wondering whether my boat is truly anchored—

or whether
I have simply forgotten
how to sail. 

The Words

The same words,
different verse—
fear, joy, love,
bitter, sweet,
punched in and out
of sentences,
of days,
of lives.

They have said it all before,
yet mean something new, tragic, or fun
each time they return.

Love once meant forever;
now it means letting go.
Joy was once a song;
now it is the quiet flow
between two sorrows.
Fear was once a warning;
now it is the shadow
of things already lost.

Bitter and sweet—
two words we keep apart,
though life has always known
they belong together.

We keep rearranging the words,
changing their places,
changing their clothes,
hoping perhaps
they will tell a different story.

But the words remain.

It is we who change—
we who grow weary
of giving them meaning,
we who discover
that every sentence
has been written
with a little of ourselves.

The words.

The same words.

Different verse.

And now, I'm exhausted,
I have nothing left to say—
except perhaps this:

sometimes silence
is not the absence of experience,
 it is the experience of absence.
Words can neither heal, nor harm
They can neither hurt, nor charm.

It is what remains
when the words
have finally told
the truth.

The Unwritten History

 

To understand our story,
you must think as we do—
in minds thick with blankness,
where words lie submerged,
waiting like bubbles
to break the silence.

I have nothing to offer
except my willing hand.
You may travel through time and space,
across the seas, across the land;
I shall walk beside you
through every night and dawn,
and wherever your journey leads,
my hand will hold you on.

But there is no promise of words.
I cannot rest until you deliver
what lies hidden beneath the silence.
You will have to think as we do,
feel what we cannot utter,
and gather the scattered fragments
of what we have been—

for only then
can our unwritten story
find a voice,
and our history
live beyond us.

The Banished

 

Voices crowd into my head.
The weather is overcast and grim;
grey clouds obscure the sun.
Characters, structures of every kind,
swirl through my restless mind.

I'm torn between here and there,
belonging nowhere,
except among the corners
of the Globe Theatre.

The Hour Between

In the crepuscular hour,
when daylight loosens its
hold on the earth
and evening gathers its shadows,
I walk alone beneath the trees.

There is a susurration
in the leaves,
a mellifluous murmur
of wind and memory,
as though the earth
were speaking
in a language older
than sorrow.

Then rain comes—
brief, silver, almost evanescent—
and leaves upon
the dry earth
the dark fragrance
of petrichor,
a scent that carries
me to places I can n
o longer name.

Through the branches,
a lambent light trembles,
neither day nor night,
but something suspended
 between them.

And suddenly,
in that quiet,
the world becomes oneiric—
half memory, half dream—
while the last warmth of the sun
rests upon my hands:
a small apricity
borrowed from winter.

There is something
numinous here,
something that makes
 silence sacred,
something indubitable
though impossible to prove
that beauty does not stay.

It arrives like light,
whispers like leaves,
breathes through rain,
and disappears before
 we can possess it.

Perhaps that is why
the heart tries to name it—

though the deepest things
remain ineffable,

and all our words,
however beautiful,
are only candles
held up against the dark.